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This is NOT 2008 - Here's Why

This is not 2008

Brian Powers

Home buying and home selling experiences you can enjoy. Real estate doesn't have to be stressful...

Home buying and home selling experiences you can enjoy. Real estate doesn't have to be stressful...

Apr 85 minutes read

Whether it's the stock market or the jobs market, there's no doubt we're in a difficult time right now with the economy. Additionally, with the "stay at home" order currently in place here in Michigan, local real estate activity has also nearly halted.

So where do we go from here? We're hearing people starting to make comparisons to "another 2008" in terms of the housing market. These doom and gloom predictions are missing one key component: data.

While it's reasonable to expect their might possibly be a short term effect on the housing market, trying to compare what's going on now to the collapse of 2008 is literally like comparing apples to oranges.

Here's 5 reasons why this is NOTHING like 2008.

1. Mortgage standards are nothing like 2008

During the housing bubble, it was difficult NOT to get a mortgage. Today, it is tough to qualify. The Mortgage Bankers’ Association releases a Mortgage Credit Availability Index which is “a summary measure which indicates the availability of mortgage credit at a point in time.” The higher the index, the easier it is to get a mortgage. As shown here, during the housing bubble, the index skyrocketed. Currently, the index shows how getting a mortgage is even more difficult than it was before the bubble.

2. Home values are not soaring out of control like they did leading up to 2008

Here is a graph showing annual house appreciation over the past six years, compared to the six years leading up to the height of the housing bubble. Though price appreciation has been quite strong recently, it is nowhere near the rise in prices that preceded the crash.

There’s a stark difference between these two periods of time. Normal appreciation is 3.6%, so while current appreciation is higher than the historic norm, it’s certainly not accelerating beyond control as it did in the early 2000s.

3. We don't have a surplus of homes for sale like before 2008 (we actually have the opposite)

The months’ supply of inventory needed to sustain a normal real estate market is approximately six months. Anything more than that is an overabundance and will causes prices to depreciate. Anything less than that is a shortage and will lead to continued appreciation. As the next graph shows, there were too many homes for sale in 2007, and that caused prices to tumble. Today, there’s a shortage of inventory which is causing an acceleration in home values.

4. Homes became too expensive to buy leading up to 2008

The affordability formula has three components: the price of the home, the wages earned by the purchaser, and the mortgage rate available at the time. Fourteen years ago, prices were high, wages were low, and mortgage rates were over 6%. Today, prices are still high. Wages, however, have increased and the mortgage rate is about 3.5%. That means the average family pays less of their monthly income toward their mortgage payment than they did back then. Here’s a graph showing that difference.

5. Homeowners are sitting on way more equity than they were in 2008

In the run-up to the housing bubble, homeowners were using their homes as a personal ATM machine. Many immediately withdrew their equity once it built up, and they learned their lesson in the process. Prices have risen nicely over the last few years, leading to over fifty percent of homes in the country having greater than 50% equity. But owners have not been tapping into it like the last time. Here is a table comparing the equity withdrawal over the last three years compared to 2005, 2006, and 2007. Homeowners have cashed out over $500 billion dollars less than before.

During the crash, home values began to fall, and sellers found themselves in a negative equity situation (where the amount of the mortgage they owned was greater than the value of their home). Some decided to walk away from their homes, and that led to a rash of distressed property listings (foreclosures and short sales), which sold at huge discounts, thus lowering the value of other homes in the area. That can’t happen today.

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